Having a child in school is a lot different than I imagined.
I imagined school shopping and art projects - evenings spent hearing about all of the fun things they did. What they read. What they played with. Who stood in as their best friend that day.
But that's not really how it goes down in our house.
I loved school. LOVED IT. Growing up on a farm surrounded by boy cousins and brothers I couldn't wait to go and make friends with people who didn't call me bossy and who thought Barbies were the bomb. I wanted to read and draw all day long. I thought school was the gateway to everything that was going to be awesome in my life.
I wanted E's for excellent on every space in every report card. I couldn't wait until they would transform to A's and B's and I would FINALLY get the math book that you couldn't write in, and instead had to complete problems on notebook paper. I thought the school counselor was cool long after everyone else thought she was lame, and in third grade I was officially the biggest suck-up I have ever to this day met in my entire life. I thought school was awesome.
And it was, until I found out it wasn't cool to love school so much. Then my excitement really just went down a smidgen on the outside.
It appears as though my made-for-the-classroom attitude wasn't passed down directly to all of my children. In a world where one's gifts lie outside of the standardized tests and required curriculum of today, it can be scary for a child and parent.
But I have some pretty great people here, and one of those is my sister-in-law, who over the weekend gave me some encouraging words at a time that I needed to hear them.
Today I am thankful for that encouragement and the courage it has given me to parent differently.
They were words I needed to hear at a time I was ready to listen.
I imagined school shopping and art projects - evenings spent hearing about all of the fun things they did. What they read. What they played with. Who stood in as their best friend that day.
But that's not really how it goes down in our house.
I loved school. LOVED IT. Growing up on a farm surrounded by boy cousins and brothers I couldn't wait to go and make friends with people who didn't call me bossy and who thought Barbies were the bomb. I wanted to read and draw all day long. I thought school was the gateway to everything that was going to be awesome in my life.
I wanted E's for excellent on every space in every report card. I couldn't wait until they would transform to A's and B's and I would FINALLY get the math book that you couldn't write in, and instead had to complete problems on notebook paper. I thought the school counselor was cool long after everyone else thought she was lame, and in third grade I was officially the biggest suck-up I have ever to this day met in my entire life. I thought school was awesome.
And it was, until I found out it wasn't cool to love school so much. Then my excitement really just went down a smidgen on the outside.
It appears as though my made-for-the-classroom attitude wasn't passed down directly to all of my children. In a world where one's gifts lie outside of the standardized tests and required curriculum of today, it can be scary for a child and parent.
But I have some pretty great people here, and one of those is my sister-in-law, who over the weekend gave me some encouraging words at a time that I needed to hear them.
Today I am thankful for that encouragement and the courage it has given me to parent differently.
They were words I needed to hear at a time I was ready to listen.
0 comments:
Post a Comment